Legal Institutions Research Articles

Moralization of law, heavy-penaltyism, and retributive justice: A corpus-assisted study of legal consciousness on Chinese social media

Previous studies on legal consciousness have primarily focused on individual-level interactions with legal institutions or personnel. However, this perspective may overlook the indirect experiences that citizens gain through social media and the social normative consensus behind individual experiences. To address this gap, this study examined the shared legal consciousness expressed by citizens on a social media platform. Using corpus-assisted discourse analysis and sentiment analysis, we analyzed 284,792 danmu comments from the most popular legal channel on Bilibili in China. Our findings provide a contemporary perspective on legal consciousness in Chinese social media, uncovering three prevailing ideologies: moralization of law, heavy-penaltyism, and a predilection for retributive justice over restorative justice. Through our mixed-methods approach using big data, we demonstrate the potential for expanding research on legal consciousness. Our findings enable a deeper understanding of how legal consciousness is expressed and shared among citizens in the digital age.

THE RIGHT TO TRIAL WITHIN A REASONABLE TIME AND THE CHALLENGES OF RESPECTING IT IN THE CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

The concept of "fair judgment and in a reasonable time" is integral to the administration of justice and the protection of human rights. This abstract explores the dual principles of fairness and timeliness within judicial processes, emphasizing their importance in ensuring that legal outcomes are just, equitable, and efficient. Fair judgment necessitates impartiality, transparency, and adherence to the rule of law, ensuring that all parties receive an unbiased and equitable hearing. Mean while, delivering judgments in a reasonable time is crucial to prevent undue delays that can exacerbate stress, financial burden, and uncertainty for the involved parties. The balance between thoroughness and efficiency is examined, highlighting the challenges faced by judicial systems globally, including caseload pressures and resource constraints. Additionally, the impact of delayed justice on public trust in legal institutions is discussed of Republic of North Macedonia. This analysis underscores the need for systemic reforms, such as procedural streamlining and technological innovations, to enhance the capacity of courts to deliver fair and timely judgments, thereby upholding the principles of justice and maintaining societal trust in the legal system of Republic of North Macedonia.

The Mechanics‐Conditions Framework as a Tool for Critical Social Media Affordance Analysis

ABSTRACTAffordances, described as action opportunities emerging from the relationship between a technology and its user, are a popular framework for understanding how people engage with social media platforms. Scholars have proposed this framework as a tool for performing critical analyses of technology, arguing that drilling down on affordances can help us understand how power shapes technology use. This conceptual analysis builds on the affordance mechanisms and conditions framework by Davis. Davis proposed to think of affordances in terms of mechanisms (request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, allow) and conditions (perception, dexterity, and cultural and institutional legitimacy). This framework sheds light on to whom and under what circumstances technologies afford certain actions to its users. I apply this framework to social media and provide examples that illustrate the framework's components. For each component, I include a set of suggested questions that a researcher interested in a critical social justice‐oriented analysis of social media affordances might ask. Asking these questions, I argue, can support a researcher in dissecting the biases, stigmata, and discrimination embedded in social media.

Propaganda of legal knowledge about Kazakhstan citizenship

In the article problematic issues surrounding the promotion of legal knowledge regarding Kazakhstan citizenship were considered, recognizing citizenship as a fundamental legal institution shaping modern Kazakhstan society's statehood. The research conducts a comprehensive analysis and synthesis of the theory and practice of disseminating legal knowledge about citizenship, aiming to identify solutions to normative consolidation challenges. Through a combination of general scientific and specialized legal methods, including analysis and theoretical generalization, as well as an examination of legal norms on citizenship, the study identifies the main trends in improving legal knowledge about citizenship. The main research outcome underscores the necessity to enhance legal measures aimed at expanding the use of forms and methods for disseminating legal knowledge about Kazakhstan citizenship. As a result, the article proposes supplementing citizenship legislation with norms mandating government bodies to provide information and advice on citizenship issues. It suggests widening public awareness about the importance of citizenship as a legal institution and supplementing political and legal acts with provisions to increase Kazakhstani society's awareness of citizenship.

Pre-trial protocol in civil proceedings

The scientific article examines the legal nature of the pre-trial protocol in civil proceedings. The institution of judicial evidence was subject to change in connection with the latest reforms of the civil procedure legisla-tion. This has led to the emergence of new institutions and the pre-trial protocol in civil proceedings is such. Until 2022, the Civil Procedure Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan (hereinafter CPC RK) did not have di-rect legal regulation of this institution, and accordingly, no theoretical studies were conducted on this issue. In civil proceedings, the prototype of the institute of pre-trial protocol was a foreign legal institution, such as the disclosure of evidence and the exchange of arguments, characteristic of English and American procedural law. The practical necessity of many aspects of such a phenomenon as the pre-trial protocol, the incomplete-ness of theoretical developments and the need to improve legislation determined the relevance of the topic of the scientific article. It should be recognized that the mechanism for drawing up a pre-trial protocol, in fact, designed to ensure the implementation of the principles of competition and equality of the parties, was not sufficiently enshrined in the civil procedural legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan. At the same time, consistent legislative regulation of the activities of bodies for the disclosure of evidence in civil proceedings is required. The institution of pre-trial protocol in civil proceedings requires regulation and integration at the legislative level, since the mechanism of conclusion in the current CPC of the Republic of Kazakhstan has not been fully investigated.

Counter-sanctions regulation: comparative legal analysis (Russia and China)

A new legal regulation is being formed in the Russian Federation related to unprecedented anti-Russian sanctions. International sanctions against Russia not only became an impetus for the development of legal institutions of Russian law, but also forced to turn to foreign anti-sanctions experience of such regulation. Under these conditions, a new legal institution of Russian law is being formed – the institute of counter-sanctions (sanctions) regulation. This process is taking place against the background of growing ties between Russia and China. At the same time, in both countries, counter-sanctions regulation is at the stage of formation. In this regard, it is relevant to conduct a comparative legal analysis, identify common and different characteristics of legislation, which will allow us to form proposals for improving Chinese and Russian counter-sanctions regulation. The author applies both philosophical and general scientific methods of cognition (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, critical and dialectical methods) and methods specific directly to legal science (structural-logical, formal-legal, comparative-legal). The key difference between the Chinese approach to the formation of a counter-sanctions system is its focus on prohibiting compliance with the sanctions of foreign states. There is no such prohibition in Russian regulation (but several similar bills have been submitted to the legislature for consideration) and the legislative emphasis is on protecting the country and individuals from unfriendly actions of foreign states. Although the Chinese counter-sanctions regulation differs from the Russian one, it has a number of common features with it. Also, Russian regulation is more advanced and transparent in terms of mechanisms for the introduction and control of counter-sanctions. The undeniable advantage of Russian counter-sanctions regulation is undoubtedly its official consolidation within the framework of the legal system, while in China a significant part of the sanctions are outside the official legal regulation and are located in the plane of political decisions on the country's trade policy.

Hungarian Model of the Restructuring Process - National Report

As a result of the transposition obligation in Article 34 of Directive (EU) 2019/ 1023 of the European Parliament and of the Council on restructuring frameworks and insolvency, Act LXIV of 2021 (hereinafter - referred to as the Restructuring Act) on restructuring and the amendment of certain acts with the purpose of legal harmonisation was promulgated on 3 June 2021, effective as of of 1 July 2022 for any legal persons struggling with financial difficulties not yet insolvent. The creation of a restructuring model prescribed by the EU directive was implemented by the Hungarian legislator through the opening of a non-contentious court procedure ordered within the jurisdiction and exclusive competence of the Metropolitan Court of Budapest. The primary aim of this paper is to develop a complex and comprehensive picture of the restructuring procedure as placed within the system of insolvency and reorganisation procedures in Hungary. Firstly, the paper showcases the unified EU objectives set out by the directive within the system of European insolvency procedures. Secondly, it describes the Hungarian procedural rules and the most important related legal institutions adopted to implement these objectives. Section 6 of the Restructuring Act sets out that the aim of restructuring is to adopt and implement a restructuring plan with some or all of the creditors and thus prevent the debtor’s future insolvency and ensure the debtor’s financial viability. For the purpose of reaching this objective, therefore, restructuring constitutes measures aiming at restoring the financial balance of the debtor, including changing the composition, the conditions or the structure of the debtor’s assets and liabilities and any other part of the debtor’s capital structure. Among these measures, the Restructuring Act lists as example the sale of the debtor’s property or part thereof, or the sale of any participation in the debt. The condition for restructuring is the likelihood of the company’s insolvency. The definition of the likelihood of insolvent Directive (EU) on restructuring frameworks and insolvency, European insolvency procedures, insolvency and reorganisation procedures, restructuring plan, non-contentious court procedure bears a central significance here: it constitutes the entrance point into the restructuring procedure. In addition to the definition of insolvency, Section 2(2) of the Restructuring and Insolvency Directive renders the interpretation of the probability of insolvency into Member State jurisdiction. Among the Explanatory notes the Restructuring Act defines the likelihood of becoming insolvent as a situation in which there are reasonable grounds for believing that the debtor will be unable to meet his/her outstanding payment obligations when they fall due, unless further measures are taken. Keywords: Directive (EU) on restructuring frameworks and insolvency; European insolvency procedures; Insolvency and reorganisation procedures; Restructuring plan; non-contentious court procedure

Re-organizing for public value and reclaiming post-capitalist possibilities

This editorial introduces the Special Issue on public value, urging scholars to ask fundamental questions about what public value organizing entails. It proposes key conceptual dimensions to foster public value thinking, highlighting the contested nature of the concept and the subjective understanding of public value among different publics. Themes emerging from the contributions to the Special Issue include re-imagining the State’s role in post-capitalistic regimes, re-designing approaches to economic planning, and re-experiencing public value through transforming relationships between planners and the planned, practicing active citizenship endeavors, and integrating environmental concerns into processes and systems of valuation. Problematizing the neoliberal misrecognition of the State as a legitimate institution for wealth creation, this special issue showcases its key role in fostering post-capitalist possibilities. The articles offer evidence and inspiration regarding innovating the ways we plan, design, produce and account for public value by leveraging what we conceptualize as new collaborative governance possibilities. Overall, we call for establishing stronger connections between existing studies on alternative economic, political, and democratic organizing with scholarship on public policy, strategic public management, transformative social innovation and social movements. Four areas for future research on post-capitalist governance are also proposed: State-businesses relationships beyond capitalism; changing conceptions of value including the value of care; municipal approaches toward community wealth building; re-imagining new public institutions for more participatory democracy.

The Role of Judicial Activism in the Enforcement of Human Rights in Pakistan and its Impacts on Governance in Pakistan

This study examines how judicial activism impacts governance in Pakistan after the lawyer's movement with a focus on its effect on human rights, the rule of law, and accountability. The study uses mixed techniques to examine Supreme Court decisions and interventions that demonstrate the judiciary's role in protecting civil liberties and checking executive powers. Apex Court's activism on extrajudicial killings forced disappearances, and gender discrimination has advanced human rights, according to the findings. The research also shows how the judiciary has strengthened the rule of law by upholding and enforcing legal principles fairly, boosting public faith in legal institutions. The research also notes that alleged judicial overreach has caused problems between the legislative and executive branches due to the courts' wide interpretations of their authority. This detailed analysis highlights the delicate balance between judicial interventions and democratic government.

Impact of Trust in Legal Systems and Institutions, and Perceived Safety on Fear of Crime

Impact of Trust in Legal Systems and Institutions, and Perceived Safety on Fear of Crime

Development or Ecocide? Sociotechnical Imaginaries and Contested Infrastructure in the “Tren Maya” Controversy

This article examines the controversy surrounding the Tren Maya railway megaproject in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula through the lens of sociotechnical imaginaries. We argue that the Tren Maya, much more than a technological intervention, came to embody differing visions of desired futures. Initially promoted by the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration as a state-led reindustrialization program to mitigate social inequalities, the project was engulfed by the nationalist-developmental imaginary of the so-called “Fourth Transformation.” The local impacts that materialized in the construction process, however, sparked significant socio-environmental conflicts and mobilized a diverse opposition movement comprising indigenous communities, scientific experts, and environmental organizations. As the controversy unfolded, protest actors leveraged various legal mechanisms to challenge the epistemic and normative claims underpinning the government’s plans, eventually giving rise to a subversive imaginary that reframed the Tren Maya as a criminal, “ecocidal” enterprise. Our study reveals the intricate interdependencies between material and discursive processes in the (de)legitimization of competing infrastructural imaginaries and their role in mobilizing social forces. In particular, we underscore the crucial yet often overlooked role of legal channels and institutions in generating, validating, and amplifying imagined futures. By illustrating how social relations and normative ideals are co-produced with technoscientific knowledge and material facts, this research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how different sociotechnical imaginaries interact, compete, and gain traction in the context of infrastructural transformations.

Judicial self fashioning: Rhetorical performance in Supreme Court opinions

Justices on the United States Supreme Court use rhetorical strategies to maintain institutional legitimacy. In the court opinion, a strategy called the monologic voice presents a flattering depiction of the Court. The monologic voice occurs through two tones, the individualistic and collective, which respectively maintain the Justices’ legitimacy through critique and the Court’s legitimacy through unification. We train large language models to identify these rhetorical features in 15,291 modern Supreme Court opinions, issued between 1946 and 2022. While the fraction of collective and individualistic tones has been relatively consistent between 1946 and 2022, the Rehnquist Court used the collective tone at a higher rate than any other Court. In recent terms, 2021 and 2022, we find suggestions of another rhetorical shift, as all Associate Justices of the Roberts Court, excluding Chief Justice Roberts, used the individualistic tone at a historically high rate.

Events, turns, and critical junctures: unpacking the temporality of supporter rights and democracy in English football

ABSTRACT The future of professional men’s football in England stands at a critical juncture. In the wake of a global pandemic, the national game has been beset by volatility and upheaval. In April 2021, six of the most storied clubs in England announced they would be joining a new breakaway European Super League (ESL). These proposals triggered vehement opposition from fan movements, catalysing the intervention of the UK government who established a fan-led review of football governance (FLR) to consult fans on future regulatory reform and the security and safety of supporters at major events. Emerging out of these exogenous shocks and endogenous change, the governance of English football is set to be radically transformed via the establishment of a new regulatory regime. In this article, we employ eventful sociology and historical institutionalism to operationalise the concept of critical juncture and apply this through an analysis of two temporal periods (1985-1990) and (2020-2024). In doing so, we show how the current ‘regulatory turn’ is interdependently linked to prior historical transformative events, namely the Heysel and Hillsborough stadium disasters and the subsequent neoliberal transformation of English football across the last four decades. Incorporating a more nuanced understanding of change and continuity in the governance of English football, we argue that new regulatory frameworks, despite their transformative potential, may continue to exhibit institutional legacies of the existing regime and prevailing political economy.

The germs of environmental protection in Roman law

AbstractMost legal institutions of modern civil law have their origins, at least in principle, in Roman law. This can also be seen in cases and legal reasoning related to the environment since certain rudiments or precursors of modern environmental law can be found in the writings of classical Roman jurists. Nevertheless, it would be an overstatement to speak of Roman environmental law. The focus of Roman classical jurists was on the protection of concrete property rights, mainly in neighborhood contexts. Only a few cases show that the underlying motive of legal argument was the protection of public interest, which brings these cases closer to the idea of modern environmental law.

Do political connections pay? Evidence of corporate payroll tax planning in Chinese firms

ABSTRACT Drawing on a dataset of listed Chinese firms, our study reveals a notable reduction in effective payroll tax rates for politically connected firms. Using China’s anti-corruption campaign as an exogenous shock, our difference-in-differences (DID) analysis indicates a significant increase in the effective payroll tax rates of politically connected firms after the campaign. Well-developed legal institutions, social security fund holdings, and high-quality external audits mitigate the effect of political connections on a firm’s effective payroll tax rates. These results are instrumental in regulating firms’ payroll tax payments from an informal institutional perspective.

The concept of legal dualism and its overcoming in contemporary studies of the Russian Empire

The productive interdisciplinary exchange with legal anthropology and the “law and society” paradigm has significantly contributed to the formation of the “legal turn” in historical studies of empires. This “turn” has intensified the study of legal pluralism, the competition and mutual influence among various types of imperial jurisdictions (state, corporate, confessional, ethnic, estate-based, regional, communal, etc.), and the significance of law and judicial institutions in managing diversity and integrating imperial spaces. Additionally, it explores the role of judicial and legal institutions in reinforcing the status and identity of imperial communities and in shaping their interactions with the state. This article, in light of the new interdisciplinary synthesis, discusses one of the oldest and most enduring concepts in the legal-historical sphere of the Russian Empire — the model of “legal dualism”. Formed in the 19th century, this concept remains influential in historiography. It posits the coexistence and sharp distinction between two legal realms: on one hand, a unified realm of modern statutory law and corresponding institutions that regulate the lives of the empire's elite; and on the other hand, an ethnically and locally variable realm of particularistic “customary law” and associated conflict resolution practices prevalent among the heterogeneous population of the imperial center and periphery. According to this concept, the establishment of new courts modeled on European systems during the post-reform period exacerbated the legal and behavioral divide, disrupting pre-existing elements of pre-reform particularistic inclusion of ethnic and class communities. However, recent research has critiqued and revised the “legal dualism” concept in both the pre-reform and post-reform periods. Analyzing this historiographical dynamic has enabled the identification of the most promising avenues for further research on the legal-historical aspects of Russia from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, developing a more realistic depiction of the interaction between the state and various local, regional, class-based, ethnic, and confessional communities within the empire.

‘Economic constitutionalism in a turbulent world’: a critical review

Abstract The article analyses the book Economic Constitutionalism in a Turbulent World edited by Skordas, Halmai and Mardikian, criticising the assumptions of societal constitutionalism and ordoliberalism on which it is based. The book concurs with the view that the current crisis of global legal institutions cannot be tackled going back to Nation States. Such an assumption seems to be inspired by societal constitutionalism à la Teubner. In contrast to traditional constitutionalism, which hinges on the dichotomy between constituent and constituted power, societal constitutionalism assigns a central role to independent institutions, whose main function is to avoid any hegemony of one social sub-system over another, in particular of politics over economics. The limit of societal constitutionalism lays in its assumption that the economic sub-system has its own rationality that the political–constitutional system can only irritate, taking for granted that the paradigm of that economic rationality is the one established after 1989, thus implicitly adhering to the neo-ordoliberal vision and legitimising its absolute immanentism. Coming to the materiality of the issues underlying the book, most of the contributions conceive globalisation as an engine for the increase of global prosperity. This confidence rests in the Ricardian theory of comparative advantage. However, the latter is valid only under condition of restrictions on the movement of capital. Another assumption made by several contributions is the theory of the varieties of capitalism, according to which individual models of capitalism tend to stabilise around certain production regimes whose key actors are large firms and business associations. According to an alternative, neo-Kaleckian paradigm, there is no natural convergence of the actors of the economic system towards a mutually beneficial institutional set-up, and it is quite unlikely that, without the external intervention of politics, the system can return to equilibrium.

Taxation in insolvency (bankruptcy) procedures of legal entities

Subject. The article analyzes a set of norms related to the legal regulation of personal income tax, corporate income tax, VAT, and other taxes, as well as the order of their collection (payment) from a bankrupt, depending on its organizational and legal form. The choice of the research object is due to the presence of problems related to ambiguous issues in taxation in bankruptcy proceedings.The purpose of the study. The article attempts to comprehensively analyze the legal support of the current measures regulating the taxation of bankrupt organizations and individuals, current law enforcement practice, and the legal positions of the country's highest courts.Methodology. The leading research method is a formal legal one.Conclusions. The article reveals and concretizes a number of legal problems. The authors argue their own point of view on the taxation of bankrupt organizations and individuals, taking into account the practice of the highest judicial authorities, which, according to the authors.It is concluded that there are grounds to talk about the formation of such a new legal institution of financial law as "public bankruptcy law".

Legal Feminism: Wang Ruqi and the 1950 Marriage Law

Abstract This article analyses Wang Ruqi’s 王汝琪 (1912–1990) contribution to the drafting of the 1950 Marriage Law, the first codified law promulgated by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It argues that Wang–who had been a legal specialist and a female political activist dating back to the 1930s and 1940s–was the actual author of the law’s first draft. In rehabilitating Wang’s long-forgotten contribution to the making of the Marriage Law, this study highlights that, first of all, lawmaking in the early years of the PRC was characterized by legal “professionalism,” rather than the “vernacularism” that scholars in recent years have tended to ascribe to this period. Second, Wang was an exemplary figure of a new breed of “state feminists” in the PRC, which we term “state-legal feminists.” State-legal feminists, like state feminists in general, were brought into the PRC state apparatus and took advantage of their role in the state to advance sociopolitical agendas. However, they differed from their fellow state feminists because they firmly believed that the state’s will and intent could be best articulated and exercised through codified laws and legal institutions. The making of the Marriage Law thus exemplifies the state-legal feminist approach insofar as it resorted to a codified law to push for the political agendas of women’s emancipation and restructuring families in China. While recent scholarship highlights the politicization of the law in the 1953 campaign to promote the Marriage Law, this study inverts this by addressing the legalization of political and social movements.

Социально-политическая стабильность и порядок: соотношение понятий и феноменов

Introduction. The article examines and analyzes such social phenomena as socio-political stability and socio-political order from the point of view of ideological, legal and value parameters. Theoretical analysis. For a long time, socio-political stability has been considered as an adequate characteristic of the political structure of the state. Scientists drew attention to the change of liberal and conservative cycles and forms of government, which saw a balance between order and freedom of society and a man. In this context, Russian philosophical thought linked the socio-political order with spiritual and moral principles as regulators of the state, society and a man, and also paid attention to freedom and legal institutions. The institutionalization of the socio-political order is carried out through the mechanisms of political power and its legitimization, ideology, and law based on the value preferences of society. The system-synergetic paradigm defines these mechanisms as order parameters underlying the self-organization of any social system. Conclusion. Socio-political stability is a qualitative characteristic of the socio-political order, which is determined by the historical, geopolitical conditions of society, with its spiritual factors and traditions. The socio-political order is not universal, it is invariant, determining the variability of human development.